ITS ORIGIN, HISTORY AND FUTURE OUTLOOK
It has always been our contention that homoeopathy is Hahnemann; and Hahnemann is homoeopath. Granted that this is true, we shall find our confirmation of this assumption in tracing the clinical application of homoeopathy in Hahnemanns early writings, and in tracing briefly its history and future outlook. We are all reasonably familiar with Hahnemanns experiences in the discovery of the Law of Healing, when in despair at the uncertain state of traditional therapeutics, he cried to the wise and beneficent God to show him some sure and certain method for the cure of his sick and suffering children. His answer is to be found in his famous Letter Upon the Necessity of a Regeneration Medicine; and from his reasoning we may infer that he was basing his conclusions upon his Cinchona experiment. In a word, the method of employing medicines similia similibus was the deriving from this mode of treatment, he informs us, he “would not enough for any of the most coveted earthly goods.”.
Yet, of the actual working of this Law of Healing, he tells us very little, in all his writings; and so far as the published records are concerned, we find, in the Lesser Writings, at least, merely the case of the “country girl,” aged 14 years, who, after “sleeping in the sun” was possessed of the “frightful idea that she saw a wolf,” and six days thereafter felt “as if she had received a great blow on the head,” whereupon she “spoke irrationally; became as if mad; wept much; had sometimes difficulty in breathing; spat white mucus, could not tell any of her sensations.” This patient, Julie, M., who had not yet menstruated, got Belladonna 2 in weakened dynamization, in seven tablespoonfuls of water, became “quieter”, would “blow her nose”, was still restless, etc. The remedy was evidently plussed, as some of the moderns now put it; and she became more rational, showed various amorous tendencies, fits of excessive anger; had an apparent aggravation of the wolfish imagination, which was the first manifestation of illness. The remedy was then superseded by Sac. lac.; and finally by “new Sulphur (new dynamization of the smallest portion) one globule in three tumblers,” followed by “the next dynamization in two tumblers”, whereupon she went on with the Sulphur occasionally for the period of about 3 weeks, at which time she had become “a healthy, rational and amiable girl”. Hahnemann does not state whether or not the menstrual period immediately appeared, but this was evidently a case of what the discerning Jahr would consider an amenorrhoea, with accompanying or resultant mental disturbance.
Jahrs superlative description of such mental states is to be found in Hartmanns Special Therapeutics According to Homoeopathic Principles–third volume–Mental diseases, as edited by Jahr. This was a work practically rewritten by this master of psychiatrics. It was written in Paris in 1854. Hahnemann does not go into any details as to the diagnosis (naming of the disease), he merely delineates the symptoms carefully, prescribes the appropriate remedies, and cures the case. He does not even inform us, as I have previously remarked, whether or not the amenorrhoea was relieved, but the patient herself was cured.
Then there is the case of O.T., an actor, 32 years old, married, who, subject to sore throat, suffered from the combination of “a prickling sensation on swallowing, with a prickling sensation and a feeling of contraction and excoriation”; he also had a pressure in the anus, etc., and it was only with difficulty that he could pass his faeces, when his “swollen haemorrhoids would protrude”. He was given Belladonna x., then “the lowest dynamization”, which relieved the throat, but the anal fissure came to tight, and he confessed to having had a chancre eight years previously. He was given Merc. viv., one globule of the lowest new dynamization (which contains vastly smaller amount of matter than the usual kind). This was given in the same manner as the Belladonna (the bottle being shaken each time) with the result that the anus was relieved. This was followed apparently by an aggravation, and an amelioration, and a return of the throat symptoms, Sac. lac. being substituted for the Mercury. Next came “ulcerative pain in the throat, bellyache, but good stools, several in succession, with great thirst”. But the anus is right. His next and final remedy was Acid nitri to smell, and then to have milk-sugar in seven. This olfaction of Acid nitri was performed by opening a small bottle containing an ounce of alcohol or brandy, wherein one globule is dissolved, and smelt for an instant or two. Whereupon the patient, in Hahnemanns words, “remained permanently cured”.
Hahnemanns simple and concise instructions for patients are nowhere better shown than in his letter concerning “Little August”, of which (meaning the medicine-W.).
He will take a grain every seventh morning and one moistened; and of No. 1 in vial S.; he will abstain somewhat from the use of fruit and eat but little of it daily, preferably with rolls, bread or buttered bread. Plums he must eat least of all. He must chew everything well, eat slowly and swallow nothing that is not masticated well.
Furthermore, he must avoid acids, coffee, tea and also everything of which he knows it does not agree with him as a rule. He must never want for plenty of exercise in the open air– in short, the “homoeopathic diet” and regimen.
The above is taken from a letter from Hahnemann translated by the late Dr. F. H. Lutze, now in the possession of the Stuart Close Library of the Hahnemann Hospital in Boston.
Hahnemanns comparison of Puls., Ign., Nux and China is found in an autographed letter given to Dr. M. I. Boger-Shattuck by the late Dr. Parkhurst of Ogunquit, Maine, and more recently presented to the Hospital by Dr. Shattuck.
So much for Hahnemann and his published case records. We have the promise of the late Dr. Richard Haehl of Stuttgart that these histories which were obtained from the Boenninghausen heirs a short time before Dr. Haehls death, may some day be published and given to the world.
Then there is the report of Sch–, a washer-woman, somewhere about 40 years old, who had the “shoot in the scrobiculus cordis, was better lying, could not sleep after three oclock in the morning, felt sick after eating, had waterbrash, and empty eructations after her meals, and was of a passionate temper– disposed to anger”–a case cured by “a full drop of the pure juice of Bryonia root.” This patient, who, like the leper whom Jesus healed, did not return; and on being asked why she did not come back, gave as the reason that, “while extremely obliged to the doctor, the like of us have no time to leave off our work”, and for three weeks previously, her illness had prevented her from earning anything.
And the case of “–e, a weakly, pale man of 42 years, with indigestion, who was cured by half-a-drop of the quadrillionth of a strong drop of Pulsatilla”, although in a footnote he states that “according to our present knowledge and experience, the same object would have been attained by taking one of the smallest globules of Pulsatilla x. (decillionth potency, and with equal certainty a single olfaction of a globule the size of the same potency of Pulsatilla).”.
Boenninghausen has reported some cases in his Lesser Writings, and the comparison of a case calling for Valerian, in the preface to the Therapeutics Pocket Book.
Jahrs Forty Years Practice contains much of clinical value, although not a great number of actual case histories.
Similarly may be it said of the works of Hartmann in his Acute and Chronic Diseases.
Ruckerts Therapeutics of Homoeopathy, or Outlines of Successful Homoeopathic Cures, is collected mainly from early homoeopathic periodicals, and was translated by Hempel and published by William Radde, in New York, in 1846. This work contains many valuable case reports, from which we select the following from Stapfs Archiv. XV, 1, pp. 103, 104. Archiv. was edited by Ernst Stapf from the year 1832 to 1836; thereafter Gross became the co-publisher. The first seven volumes are included in the Stuart Close collection in the Hahnemann Hospital Library.
Arsenicum x., in six ounces of water, one tablespoonful a day; afterwards, during a relapse, three doses of Ars.x., at intervals of eight days. Spasm in the chest.
Symptoms: In stormy weather, or when walking fast, when putting on warm or tight clothes, when laughing violently, he feels an oppression or an exhaustion of the lungs, anxiety, which makes him alternately cold and warm. The symptoms gradually abate, while a white viscid saliva is rising in the form of small vesicles. Oppression and anxiety increase as soon as he enters a warm room. After the attack, weakness and sick feeling.
Among the earliest works on therapeutics, was Jacob Jeanes Homoeopathic Practice of Medicine, published in Philadelphia, 1838. Here the wisdom of the fathers of our homoeopathic art is seen in the authors observation that,.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.